Sweden’s latest fitness craze, plogging, is a mashup of jogging and the Swedish plocka upp, meaning pick up, in this case, litter. There are plogging groups in Scandinavia, Germany and other parts of Europe. According to the Swedish fitness app Lifesum, which makes it possible for users to track plogging activity, a half-hour of jogging while picking up trash will burn 288 calories for the average person, compared with 235 via jogging alone. A brisk walk expends about 120 calories.

The Washington Post reports that in the U.S., it’s just starting to catch on among exercisers fed up with rubbish along their routes. They carry trash bags and pluck litter and recyclables off sidewalks and bushes wearing gardening gloves for safety. The environmental organization Keep America Beautiful recently started promoting plogging to encourage trash-free communities, putting out the #plogging message to its 600 affiliates. Spokesman Mike Rosen reports that response has been surprisingly robust.

This article appears in the August 2018 issue of Natural Awakenings.